After Three Months, I Have Finally Adapted to a New Way of Life
From mid-to-late August, the idea began to form in my mind of once again studying the basic subjects—mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology—thoroughly from the ground up, and of raising my English reading and writing to a level where I could read English-language professional books, so as to lay a fresh foundation for deeper study. I wanted to return to the state I had in my youth and give my brain a proper update. But at the time I was still genuinely hesitant; after all, I was already 46 years old, and there were many shortcuts I could take instead of enduring this hardship. So making up my mind and putting it into practice was not easy.
Yet once that thought arose, it would not leave my mind. All these years I have wanted to systematically master both traditional medicine and modern medicine, to integrate Chinese and Western medicine, and at the same time to study psychiatry systematically. But as an adult I have many unavoidable obligations, and the vast sea of medical classics is daunting.
Every branch of medicine is enough to make one's head ache; studying it seriously and comprehensively inevitably costs an enormous amount of effort. Although I am diligent, can persevere, and already have some medical foundation, completing such a plan would still require more than ten years of effort. Yet life is fleeting, time passes in the blink of an eye, and I have only one life; by all rights I should enjoy it while I can. I already live a settled, comfortable life and could simply relax and enjoy it; challenging myself like this is really asking for trouble.
But some things are innate: the drive to tirelessly explore the unknown, the subconscious urge to strive for perfection in an imperfect world, and the irrepressible compassion for human suffering. These are engraved in my genes—a fatal, personal imprint I cannot shake off even if I wanted to—and they keep me from stopping.
These years of experience have unfolded before my eyes, like a long scroll, a dazzling array of diseases. As if looking at the bustling world painted in Along the River During the Qingming Festival, I have seen more and more diseases and the suffering behind them. Some of the people I love are also afflicted by these diseases, yet there is no one who can relieve their pain.
Extending myself to others, I know there are many people in the world suffering from illness, and many who love them and grieve for their pain. I want to study medicine comprehensively and systematically, and at the same time keep exploring new techniques for solving medical problems in practice, so as to relieve the suffering of the people I love—and of the people others love. This is my life's work.
I have pondered the meaning of life, only to find there is no correct answer. Later I stopped asking such questions, because the questions themselves have little meaning. I turned instead to my own inner feelings, and found that the most profound feeling life gives me is love—whether loving or being loved, it is a deeply beautiful feeling.
Love makes me happy, and love fills me with strength. I have been deeply loved by many people in this world; from birth to now I have never lacked love, and I have even been loved abundantly, for which I am grateful. I also deeply love the people of this world. Relieving others' suffering, raising their quality of life, and helping them live more happily—this is how I express love to those I love and to strangers I have never met.
From childhood onward, my life has never lacked people who came along and praised me for being clever, though I myself have never felt clever. Perhaps because my father had such high expectations of me from an early age, my true inner feeling is that I am a person of average intelligence, not perfect, and that I must keep learning to improve myself and draw a little closer to perfection. This is what still gives me enough inner drive to improve and correct myself.
I have also almost completely inherited my mother's personality. My mother was a positive, optimistic person who worked hard her whole life. In the great famine years she survived on unbelievable things to fill her stomach—tree bark and guanyin clay—but in doing so she developed a chronic stomach disease that never healed, which later progressed to stomach cancer and finally took her from us prematurely.
My mother's loving care nourished my heart, so that I have never easily fallen into utter despair. She gave me the first great love of my life. In that age of material scarcity, whenever the busy farming season ended, she would buy two jin of meat, add some soybeans or peanuts, put them in an earthen jar, and simmer them slowly over the hearth fire until they were tender. Then she would serve the meat, soybeans and peanuts to her three children, while my father and she ate their rice soaked in the broth.
Whenever I recall these memories, my eyes fill with tears. What selfless love this was. Though I was born into a poor farming family, my parents gave me abundant love, leaving me emotionally rich for my whole life. Everyone I have loved has been deeply moved by my love for them, for no other reason than that I inherited my parents'—especially my mother's—capacity to love us.
Having passed the age of forty, having witnessed all kinds of disasters and diseases, and having tasted life's bitter and the sweet, my deepest feeling is that love is humanity's most fundamental need, and the capacity to love is the most essential ability a person must master. Because we have been deeply loved, we in turn love others deeply, love this world deeply, and love this life whose true meaning and value are so hard to pin down. Love makes us happy, love broadens our hearts, love can dissolve hatred, and love brings peace. A life nourished by love, whether or not it has meaning or value, is deeply worth living.
My most painful childhood memory is the sight of my mother, during a stomach attack, sitting on the stone step by the door, convulsively vomiting sour fluid. My father and we three children always stood by, feeling sorry for her. Countless times I looked at my suffering mother with concern and guilt, grieved that I could not relieve her pain. And she, at those moments, would always look at us lovingly and tell us not to mind her, to go back to the table and eat. My greatest childhood dream was simply that my mother would recover completely; because of her illness, I wanted from an early age to become a good doctor.
Mother has been gone for twelve years. The night before last I dreamed of her again. In the dream, my mother—by then in the late stages of stomach cancer—actually showed some signs of improvement. She was returning from my uncle's home and, as she reached the neighbor's door, happened to meet me, who had just returned to my hometown from Beijing. I held her head, overwhelmed by joy and grief, and wept aloud. As always, she lovingly stroked my head and told me not to be sad. Everything in the dream was so familiar and vivid; only upon waking did I realize it was a dream.
My mother's death strengthened my resolve to practice medicine. No matter how many twists and turns the road takes, I will not abandon that simple childhood dream in this lifetime. Although I still do not consider myself especially clever, my past study has at least proved I have above-average learning ability. I have excelled in every subject, and I have extraordinary perseverance and staying power. So, valuing what I have, I still hope to spend the rest of my life fully mastering medical knowledge and making innovations in clinical skill, so as to save many patients like my mother. My own experience has taught me better than anyone the truth that "saving one person can save the happiness of a whole family." The ancients said diligence can make up for dullness; a person of above-average intelligence, if diligent enough, can do a thing well. This is my belief, and because I hold to it I have never been discouraged by temporary setbacks.
All of this has forged my soul and granted me powerful spiritual strength, so that when facing major choices I can overcome my fear of difficulty, keep my original heart, not be swayed by others' opinions, and every time take firm steps toward the less-trodden depths. If you love a calling, if an aspiration comes from the deepest part of your soul, then without much hesitation all you need do is surmount every obstacle and walk firmly toward your goal. Some life experiences are destined to be lived by only a very few; when we are in the midst of them, there is no need to be lost or afraid. We need only be resolute and leave the rest to time. Steadily, day by day, even the thorniest problem will one day be solved.
This adjustment is an important turning point in my life. By choosing to begin a new life mode at my age, I have had to face many questions of cutting myself off from my old self. Past living and study habits both needed moderate adjustment. In the first month my mood fluctuated constantly, because the change in life mode brought discomfort that even affected my regular routine. But I did not panic or become anxious; I told myself that when turning from one road to another, a period of adjustment is needed, and all I had to do was gradually adapt.
By the second month I had my doubts—doubts about my decision, and doubts whether my 46-year-old brain could handle such a demanding task. Especially when I noticed my memory was not what it used to be, I even worried this might end up being a futile waste of a life; at times my confidence wavered and I thought of giving up.
But persevering helped me work through these problems. Entering the third month, my brain felt as if it had been awakened, flexible again as when I was young, and my memory improved markedly. It turned out that some brain regions, left unused for a long time, had automatically slipped into a semi-dormant state; after two or three months of repeated training, those dormant regions were reactivated, and in the end my whole brain was far more agile than before. This is the biological principle of use it or lose it: use it often and it evolves; leave it unused and it atrophies. No wonder.
At the same time, my ability to manage time and regulate my emotions improved markedly. With new goals and a new mode of study, work and life, I needed to manage my time more efficiently. Occasional problems during study affected my mood, but as emotions rose and were again and again regulated, they rose less and less easily, until at last my mind was as calm as still water. In this process I also adjusted my family's psychological expectations of me, so that my loved ones grew accustomed to the new me.
After three months of adjustment, I know I have successfully moved from that old road onto a new one. Modern people's life expectancy is much longer than in the past; the rest of my life is actually still long, and if my time is fully used, there is still much I can accomplish. I look forward to the day, after I have reached the age of knowing Heaven's will, when I still have abundant energy and a strong thirst for knowledge, still walk powerfully on the road of my dream, and have new life experiences to share with the people I love.